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She rubbed the glass with her hanky. Her reveries tangled themselves in swirling chimney smoke drifting over grey slates. 'Gosh, that frantic goose straining at its tether. Grandpa whirling like a dervish slashing at its long neck until bright carmine blood spurted. The bird heaved - its blood like a necklace of lush rubies beaded the whiteness'. She wrote 'dead goose' on the steamed-up glass. "Darling do come away from the window - what's going on isn't nice."

She thought of a gorgeous ballerina dancing the dying swan. Granny disappeared to help Grandpa drag it to the outhouse. The trail of blood stayed till the snow melted. Grandpa called the goose Frederick the Great. Daddy whispered, "Thank God the old boy steeled himself to the dread deed. Yesterday would have been
better. . . it needs to hang but we mustn't complain."

'After a big fried breakfast we all went for a tramp in the snow. Such precious days. We clapped Frederick to the table, stuffed with sausages and chestnuts - he smelt divine too. Daddy praised Granny's cooking and said grace. Life was so wonderful I want to cry. Daddy carved. I've never forgotten the flavour or the taste of Granny's fabulous sausages'.

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Gladys stiffened as resentment flooded back: 'Mummy could have been more open with me. How's this for a pack of lies? "Marriage frees women from confusion and doubt".' She fiddled her cuffs, took a hesitant step forward and changed her stance: 'that's exactly what that smug bitch Nurse Florence Blunt wrote in Home Weekly about the joys of motherhood'. Gladys's inner eye drew on a full-page illustration of a goofy débutante-type wrapped in clouds of chiffon, wearing huge diamanté earrings and cuddling a fat slob of a baby: 'if mummy had freed me from doubts before I met Parnell I'd have killed to stay a spinster. Even Aunt Doris doesn't understand. One sixpence in the gypsy's hand would have kept me safe - the crippled bitch was full of envy. I can't help the colour of my eyes or my looks. Parnell thinks I owe it all to mother nature. He's never understood the care I lavish on myself inside and out. That's one bit of mummy's advice I cherish, "purge internal filth and there's no reason why health should be a problem".

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'Tomorrow I'll go shopping in the West End - Hitler permitting.' She reached into her handbag for her weekly allowance. If Parnell were like her father she'd love him forever.
'Oh Daddy - all the love I've ever known and felt has come from you.'
'Daddy said he loved me because I was pure and innocent. Parnell doesn't have such beautiful thoughts. Daddy says Parnell is the spitting image of Charles Darwin. He came home from a lecture on evolution with a photograph of the man,"take away the beard and it's Parnell."
'Daddy was warming his backside at the drawing room fire when he said that. He has such an adorable derrière. Daddy hates Darwin, calls him the Anti-Christ. God made humans in his own image, if he'd wanted monkeys we'd all be monkeys, simple as that. Daddy's logic is so sharp. Parnell must have descended from something big and hairy; his sex organ is grotesque. Daddy loathed him from the start. My headache's killing me. When God called Granny to Heaven we went to the mortician's parlour to say goodbye. I peered into her coffin expecting to see an angel but she was hideous and they'd stuffed her with straw. A few weeks earlier she'd been filling the house with flowers. I know I made a terrible screech but I couldn't breathe. This room brings it all back. It was straw. Mummy said it's an uncomfortable thought but they had to find out why Granny died suddenly and so took bits of her for examination. Why not put the bits back again? Surely God wanted Granny to go to him intact. Mummy said we shouldn't judge it uncouth that strangers dressed her in her bridal gown to go to Jesus. I peeped below her bodice - the cut was huge and they'd stitched her up with common hemp. Undertakers should be lined up and shot'.